The Trellis Method’s Story Plots Development Workbook
Genres have significant influence over an audience’s pre-established expectations, but it’s how writers turn those familiar aspects into fresh plots and subplots that can surprise and delight readers.
Satisfy Your Readers’ Expectations!
Create your main and subsidiary plot events that take place within the story. The lesson includes the 28 page development guide, helping you weave plot with subplots. The worksheet prompts for events, story problem, emotions, stakes, character details (e.g., focus, goal, issues), plot’s fulfillment of genre-established expectations, settings, secrets, and twists.
For example:
- Main Plot: The main plot highlights a thread of crucial events that comprise the narrative of what happens within the story (i.e., the cause) and the result (i.e., the effect).
- Subplots: The subplots support and amplify the main plot, following a logical series of events arranged based on the Story Beats.
- Learn and Do: Learn story structure while you create the main plot and subplots
- Emotions: Identify opportunities to force your character to react with emotions.
- Details: Use the prompt-based worksheet to gather all the event details.
What Writers Are Saying
Visual Aids
“The first time I saw the parallel-and-merge graphic, something clicked. That’s what I’m following in my current WIP. …It gave me clarity on a challenge I’m dealing with: subplots. …I love how you’ve thought of everything writers need to consider!”
— Priscilla
Preplanning
“I wish I’d read all this when I started my current trilogy. It’s quite useful for one who had no idea where to take the story. …That is–in the words of Michael Arndt–“insanely great”. Being a plotter, this fits me perfectly. What a lot of work you put into this”
— Jacqui
Plot Settings
“I love it when the [plot] setting becomes yet another character in a story.”
— Vera
Free Overview
Click Step 4: Plot Events to download an overview of the genre selection process.
Author’s Bio
Grant P. Ferguson developed his reading superpower as an under-tall kid in grade school. After balancing on tiptoes to pluck a science fiction novel from the library’s top shelf, it was love at first reading. Like a nerd turned super hero, books transformed his ordinary life into an extraordinary genre mashup of thriller, romance, and faith. He studied writing, and like a mad (but not evil) scientist, turned his research into the Trellis Method. From their ‘Fortress of Solitude’ in Central Texas, Grant and wife share their love of writing.